Canvas, Fall 2023

e Girl in e Diary

Searching for Rywka from e Lodz Ghe o

e Girl in e Diary

Searching for Rywka from e Lodz Ghe o

On View October 25, 2023 Learn more at maltzmuseum.org

On View October 25, 2023

Created by the Galicia Jewish Museum Kraków, Poland

On the cover

GroundWorks

DanceTheater company dancers Teagan Reed and Ahna Bonnette. Cover photo by Dale

Unreal Worlds

Lori Kella creates surreal, landscape inspired scenes to turn her camera on

6 Editor’s Note

Canvas celebrates recent journalism awards

8 On Deck

Upcoming openings and current events from around Northeast Ohio

10 Big Time

Finding space across four galleries to showcase large-scale art

12 Beyond the Surface

Exhibit transports viewers to streets, art studios of Israel

16 Worlds in Transition

AI art is on the front burner

20 Unreal Worlds

Lori Kella creates surreal, landscape inspired scenes to turn her camera on

26 Community Anchor

Karamu House harnesses storytelling beyond the theater

29 Who’s Next Spotlight on dancers in Northeast Ohio

34 Stage listings

Stages from across Cleveland, Akron and beyond

37 Listings

Local listings for museums, galleries, theaters and more

39 Curator Corner

“Anatomy Collected” by Betsy Stirratt

Dong. Dance profiles starting on page 29.

“Shifting Ground” panel 2 by Lori Kella (2022). Digital chromogenic print, 45 x 30 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Editor’s Note

Each year, Canvas and its sister publications at the Cleveland Jewish Publication Company submit entries to a few di erent statewide journalism competitions.

The contests consider submissions for all kinds of work that goes into publishing media, with categories like feature writing, page layout and website design.

Editor

Amanda Koehn

editor@canvascle.com

Design Manager

Stephen Valentine

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Alyssa Schmitt, Carlo Wol

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Kevin S. Adelstein

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CJPC Editor

Bob Jacob

CFO

Tracy Singer

Canvas staff celebrates their wins at the Press Club of Cleveland’s All Ohio Excellence in Journalism Awards in June.

This awards season – which considered content created during 2022 – is shaping up to be a good one for Canvas and the CJPC. In the Press Club of Cleveland’s 2023 All Ohio Excellence in Journalism Awards in June, we received several awards. Notably, our design manager Stephen Valentine won best general circulation magazine cover design in Ohio for Canvas’ Spring 2022 cover, showing a sculpture by artist Diane Therese Pinchot. Additional awards went to our senior designer Jessica Simon and Valentine for page designs that included Canvas, and to me for the cover story about Pinchot.

In addition, Canvas won several awards from the Society of Professional Journalists Ohio’s Best Journalism Contest. We also won best cover design, best website for a trade publication and best personality profile in this contest. Our sta also received awards in categories like best arts reporting and best trade publication news story.

To read more about the CJPC’s awards and the stories that received them, visit bit.ly/3DlMq3h.

My colleagues and I take so much pride in our work for Canvas, and receiving awards is a very fun and validating part. We always feel honored to tell the stories of artists and arts organizations in our community, and any awards we may win are thanks to them being willing to share their stories with us.

And of course we wouldn’t be here without our readers. Whether you are a loyal Canvas follower or this is your first time picking up the magazine, we greatly appreciate your interest and support.

As is typical for our fall magazine, this issue hones in on Northeast Ohio’s stages. New this year, we profile three dancers rising in professional dance, including Ahna Bonnette, who you see with Teagan Reed on the magazine cover. Dance is a uniquely challenging profession, physically, mentally and creatively, and it was a delight to speak with these dancers and share their stories.

For the stage section, we also check in with Karamu House – the 108-year-old theater that continues to nurture the talents of Black artists and serve as a cultural center toward a more inclusive, equitable society.

Also in this issue, we profile Lori Kella – a Cleveland artist who constructs scenes inspired by Lake Erie’s shoreline, lending to a unique and experimental photographic style. We also visit a local exhibition highlighting Israeli street artists, and an exhibit focused on large-scale artwork that is being shown across four area venues. And, we look at how AI has a ected some local creators and how it’s shifting the way all of us interact with technology.

As always, I hope you enjoy this issue. And, if you have any story pitches or ideas for Canvas to cover either here or in our e-newsletter, send me a note at editor@canvascle.com.

Amanda Koehn Editor

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, @CanvasCLE. Sign up for Canvas’ free e-newsletter at canvascle.com/signup.

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Photo / Press Club of Cleveland

ON DECK

Upcoming openings and current events from around Northeast Ohio

Compiled by Amanda Koehn

BORDERLIGHT FESTIVAL

Through Aug. 5

The BorderLight Festival will host its first allfringe festival with three days of entertainment in and around Cleveland’s Playhouse Square through Aug. 5. More than 130 local and national artists will perform in theater, dance, circus, cabaret, puppetry, spoken word, stand-up comedy and more. As one of hundreds of fringe festivals worldwide, BorderLight is a platform for independent artists and companies to showcase their work and engage new audiences in a vibrant festival environment. Single tickets, bundled passes and all-access passes can be purchased at borderlightcle.org/2023-festival. In addition to ticketed events, programming includes 41 events that are free and open to the public.

Venues include Hermit Club, Cibreo Privato, Parnell’s Irish Pub, the Middough Building at Cleveland State University, US Bank Plaza and stages within Playhouse Square. borderlightcle.org

CANTON MUSEUM OF ART

“An American Journey: Watercolor Achievements from the CMA Collection” | Aug. 22 – Oct. 29

The Canton Museum of Art will showcase the brilliant colors, brushstrokes and stories within its collection of watercolor paintings this fall. “An American Journey: Watercolor Achievements from the CMA Collection” shares the museum’s acquired achievements in the critic-declared “American” painting medium, capturing the spontaneity and exciting light and color effects possible. Cleveland surpassed Boston as the country’s top city for watercolor in the 1920s, becoming popular in part because of close-knit artistic community in Ohio, according to the museum. This exhibit is comprised of works that trace the history of watercolor since the 19th century, highlighting major American and Ohio artists including Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Oscar Bluemner, Charles Burchfield, Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper.

Canton Museum of Art is at 1001 Market Ave. N., Canton.

cantonart.org

“Fairy in the Lake” by Obediya Jones-Darrell is a short opera about a young man from Brazil who overcomes adversity and dares to chase a fairy in the lake, performed by an aerial circus artist. The accompaniment is performed by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. It is part of the BorderLight Festival and free and open to the public. Graphic courtesy of BorderLight.

“Children Playing at the Beach,” c. 1915-20. Edward Potthast (American, 1857-1927). Watercolor on paper, 14 x 20 inches. Purchased by the Canton Museum of Art in memory of Margretta Bockius Wilson, 2021.2.

CLEVELAND PRINT ROOM “SÍIHIL” | Until Sept. 16

The Cleveland Print Room – formerly located in the ArtCraft Building – has opened its first iteration of ƒ/2 (F stop two), a community-based pop-up project focused on deepening relationships with the larger community through public exhibitions, educational workshops, partnerships and experimental programs. ƒ/2 centers artists and photographers in its daily operations, creating space to engage with artists and their work at different venues throughout Cleveland. Its first exhibition for ƒ/2, “SÍIHIL,” exhibits Cleveland artist Jimena Horta. The exhibit invites the community to be privy to the experiences of people who menstruate, relating to reproductive and mental health. The title is taken from the Mayan language word meaning birth.

Cleveland Print Room’s ƒ/2 is at Hangar #2 at City Goods, 1438 W. 28th St., Cleveland. It will occupy the space through Dec. 31.

clevelandprintroom.com

CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF ART

2023 Faculty Exhibition | Aug. 31 – Oct. 8

A tradition that spans more than 100 years, the Cleveland Institute of Art’s Faculty Exhibition is a celebration of art, design and their makers. This season, it provides an opportunity for the public to view new, original and innovative works by CIA’s world-renowned art and design faculty.

A public opening for this popular annual exhibition will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Aug. 31 in CIA’s Reinberger Gallery.

Reinberger Gallery is at 11610 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. cia.edu

“Bird on a Branch” by Dinara Mirtalipova. Acrylics on canvas, 48 x 48 inches. Mirtalipova is a faculty member in CIA’s Illustration Department. Photo courtesy of CIA.

EMILY DAVIS GALLERY

“Easy Prey” | Through Oct. 6

Cleveland sculptor Kimberly Chapman’s “Easy Prey” exhibition explores the exploitation of women. Her porcelain sculptures touch upon loss of reproductive freedom, domestic violence and shaming, on view at the Emily Davis Gallery at Myers School of Art at The University of Akron. The artist also shines a light on women reluctantly cast into the spotlight in both circuses and European royal courts. Tangentially, Chapman is showing “Eighty-Six Reasons for Asylum Admission” – a collection of sculptures and photography that examines how and why women were sent to mental asylums – at the university’s Institute for Human Science & Culture through Dec. 2.

An artist’s reception will take place for “Easy Prey” from 5-7 p.m. Aug. 31. Her reception for “Eighty-Six Reasons for Asylum Admission” is from 4:30-8 p.m. Oct. 4. Emily Davis Gallery at Myers School of Art at The University of Akron is at 150 E. Exchange St., Akron. uakron.edu/art/galleries/edg

“SÍIHIL” by Jimena Horta. Image courtesy of Cleveland Print Room.

“Freedom Fighter: A Seat at the Roundtable” (2023) by Kimberly Chapman. Photo courtesy of the artist.

BIG TIME

Exhibit finds space across four galleries to showcase large-scale art

By Grace Salter

With a creative vision to recognize and spotlight local arts organizations and artists, Mary Urbas’ idea to create “The Big @ss @rt Show” was first pitched at a gallery committee meeting at Chagrin Falls’ Valley Art Center. Her goal was to assemble both east and west side Northeast Ohio galleries to participate together and support each other, all in an e ort to exhibit large-scale artwork.

Urbas is the gallery coordinator at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland and she is on the Valley Art Center’s gallery committee. After discussing locations with VAC committee member John Sargent III and gallery director Dan Simone, they invited BAYarts, Artists Archives of the Western Reserve and the Gallery at Lakeland to join the collaboration.

Each organization eagerly accepted the invitation, and the “Big @ss @rt Show” is now on view in all four locations – with varying open and end dates, public receptions and artwork in each space. The show gives all of them the opportunity to display artwork often too large or all consuming to fit gallery spaces for an average show.

“The idea to show large-scale artworks started with conversations I had with John Sargent years ago,” Urbas says. “... There’s a power in numbers, which is why the collective we, John, Dan and I, decided to go citywide. Go big or go home.”

VALLEY ART CENTER

VAC, a visual arts hub, was the first to debut its exhibition to the public, with a reception July 7 in its Bowen Gallery. Showcasing a collection of contemporary artwork, it will be on view through Aug. 23.

The VAC show features a lineup of local artists including Leigh Brooklyn, Bonnie McCormick, Alex Jasko and Sargent. It also includes a variety of media and styles including oil paintings, sculptures, and realist and abstract paintings.

Julie Polsinelli, assistant director and gallery manager of VAC, says she wanted to display artwork inspired by nature and healing.

“Much of my work deals with nature and the way being in nature and around natural forms is energizing, healing and inspiring,” she says. “This power of nature is, I believe, connected to our biological origins and its connection to our early lives as human creatures.”

“West Wall Too,” by McCormick was created with both oil and acrylic paints, measuring 44½ by 74½ inches. Utilizing abstract patterns and vibrant colors, the painting aims to bring attention to what is rarely recognized – a painting’s background.

“With confident yet gentle palettes, I use color vibrancy and focus on the materiality of oil paint,” McCormick writes in her description. “The ‘wallpaper’ with its systematic, abstracted patterns, decorative with carefully planned color relationships, makes the invisible visible and the intangible real. Something rarely focused on, the ‘wallpaper’ itself, becomes a subject of painting.”

“Love,” a 48 x 48-inch oil painting on canvas by Brooklyn, was created after she encountered a newly married couple in Los Angeles while she was pursuing street photography.

“Their love was palpable and their combined style was interesting and innovative,” Brooklyn writes in her description.

Left: “Peace and the War between a Person and Her Thinking,” by Libby Chaney. Mixed media, fabric, 92 x 146 inches, on view at Artists Archives of the Western Reserve. Right: “Painted Wood and Nails,” sculpture by John Jackson (1995), on view at Artists Archives of the Western Reserve. Canvas Photos / Grace Salter

“I was instantly drawn to their funky hair and matching denim with all the patches. They agreed to let me photograph them, and I was able to capture this candid and seemingly intimate moment of them looking deeply into each other’s eyes, and it really spoke to me. Amongst all the loud cars and people in the city, they managed to have this very quiet and very private moment. It was beautiful.”

ARTISTS ARCHIVES

Artists Archives of the Western Reserve in Cleveland’s University Circle neighborhood opened its show July 13. Executive Director Mindy Tousley says the organization had large artworks of all media and was excited to participate in the collaboration. As an archival facility, it had many artworks that deserved a chance to be shown, some of which dated back to the 1980s.

“The Archives has developed a history of collaborations with other arts organizations, so when this show was proposed we naturally accepted the idea, which struck us as a lot of fun,” Tousley says. “The serious part, for me, is that this exhibition allowed me to get some of the very large work that is in the Archives out and into the public eye. It was a real pleasure to select and install this exhibition.”

For example, “Domestic Diva,” a 2005 mixed media and acrylic painting by Patricia Zinsmeister Parker, and “Painted Wood and Nails,” a sculpture created by John Jackson in 1995, both finally made their debut, in part due to the lack of space for large artwork in Cleveland.

Artist Libby Chaney spoke about her fiber piece, “Peace and the War between a Person and Her Thinking” at the opening reception and described her battle choosing di erent colors, structures and patterns while creating the work, hence the name.

“This work was originally composed of large, mostly red pieces,” Chaney says. “I decided to rework and expand it. I covered, erased and refigured most of the shape. In the course of working, I became intrigued with pastels and wanted to make a calm environment.”

The AAWR show is on view through Aug. 26.

THE GALLERY AT LAKELAND

The Gallery at Lakeland’s show opened with a reception July 23. Urbas says this show is the biggest of the four participating venues and includes textiles, jewelry, paper and other media. It includes 26 artworks by 27 artists.

In conjunction with the exhibit, Urbas created a fast-paced reception program and discussion for visitors to learn about a variety of smaller arts organizations and projects, titled “Big Heads of Little Arts Organizations.” It included a “rapid-fire” talk, where each organization represented showed 20 slides at 20 seconds a piece to provide information about their missions and plans for the future, she explains.

Urbas notes she showcases her former art teacher from Cleveland Heights High School, Larry Krause, through his oil painting on canvas, “Window Trimmer.” Also displayed in the exhibition is “Temperamental,” by Jenni er Omaitz, a colorful, abstract acrylic painting on canvas.

The Gallery at Lakeland show is on view through Sept. 8.

BAYARTS

BAYarts in Bay Village was the final venue to open its exhibition on July 28.

Karen Petkovic, the artistic director at BAYarts, says the

organization is thrilled to be part of this exhibition series. Having more limited space, the gallery chose fewer artists. Eight artworks are in the show, on view through Aug. 26.

“It is not often in Cleveland that east side and west side galleries participate together and exhibit,” Petkovic says. “I think this is worth mentioning, as our wonderful city is always a little divided – even in the art world.”

“Everyone Royal” by Erjon Hajnaj is one of the eight artworks displayed at BAYarts.

Urbas says she is proud of the execution of and participation in the “The Big @ss @rt Show,” and she’s hopeful it will be informative to the di erent audiences. She’s thankful to have the chance to recognize and support the work of local artists, she adds.

ON VIEW

For the full list of artists, locations, dates and more information about “The Big @ss @rt Show,” visit thebigassartshow.com.

Above: “Everyone Royal” by Erjon Hajnaj. Oil on canvas, 60 x 72 x 1.5 inches. Courtesy of BAYarts. Below: “Temperamental,” by Jenniffer Omaitz. Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 72 inches, on display at The Gallery at Lakeland. Courtesy of The Gallery at Lakeland.

Exhibit transports viewers from Cleveland to streets, art studios of Israel

The world is the street artist’s canvas and often unsuspecting passersby are their audience. Many are also studio artists who work in similar styles to their public work and experiment with new media.

Street art is particularly popular in Israel, where gra ti walking tours take tourists and locals to see the di erent forms of expressions on walls throughout many cities and neighborhoods.

To showcase their work and dig a little deeper into who some of these artists are, “Surface Identities: Studio Works by Israeli Street Artists” is on display through December at the Roe Green Gallery at the Jewish Federation of Cleveland in Beachwood. Sara Hurand serves as the exhibit’s curator.

“I honor the Federation for knowing that street art is worth highlighting as fine art, good art,” Hurand tells Canvas. “If you look at the artists that have been exhibited at the Roe Green Gallery, they

are absolutely world class. I give credit to the Federation for acknowledging the work of street artists as world class, and showing it in a comprehensive way.”

Hurand lived in Northeast Ohio from 2001 until 2017, when she moved to Tel Aviv. During her time in Cleveland, she was involved in both the Jewish and art communities, co-founding the Cleveland Jewish Arts & Culture Lab – a Mandel Jewish Community Center program a liated with the Federation – with Rabbi Zachary Trubo and serving on the Cleveland Israel Arts Connection committee at the Federation since its inception.

Curating her first exhibition for the Roe Green Gallery, she selected 16 Israeli street artists and highlighted 55 of their studio works. As one walks through the exhibit, they get a sense of each artist’s style and maybe even a bit of their story, as the title suggests.

“Surface is implying what you get at first glance, and identity is what

you get when you start to look deeper,” Hurand says. “When you encounter street art in real life, you walk by it and might get a clue or tag that gives you an indication of who made it, and maybe not. In this exhibition, we connect the personal stories of the artists with their studio work.”

A UNIQUE CULTURE

Many of the artists featured use alternative names for their public art, common especially among those who got their start when street art was still illegal in some places or seen as societally transgressive, Hurand says.

“The scope, scale and prominence of street art in Israel has been increasing for about 20 years,” she says. “It’s a young, modern society. Many of the artists in this exhibition are part of the originators of the Israeli street art scene, and are now recognized not just in Israel but around the world where they are commissioned to work, sometimes even in cities where their ancestors fled.”

Now, many of them have become famous for their work and utilize social media to interact with their audience. Hurand points to one of the featured artists, Igor Revelis, also known as Klone, who has now begun going by his real name.

The exhibit also highlights artists from many di erent backgrounds, but have all found themselves on the streets – and in the studios – of Israel. Revelis, Lior Bentov or Pesh Visuals, and Karen Missk or “The MisSk” are three

Story and photography by Courtney Byrnes

Or Bar-El’s “Street Cat,” “Space Out,” and “Highs and Lows,” all digital prints on canvas.

Hurand

featured artists who were born in Ukraine. Murielle Cohen, also known as Murielle Street Art, was born in Montreal, Canada and immigrated to Israel as a young adult.

“Asking 16 Israelis about their family stories reveals so much about Israel, and these are the artists who dare to ‘shout’ their creative work,” Hurand says. “So, this was at the core, for me, how meaningful curating this exhibition has been. It is fun and complex, just like each of us when we look a little deeper under the surface.”

Debbie Yasinow, director of the Cleveland Israel Arts Connection at the Federation, tells Canvas the exhibit has been in the works for four years, starting before the COVID-19 pandemic.

A lot of the works, she points out, were created during the pandemic as everyone was forced inside and they took to their studios more frequently. One exception was Adi Gershon, a studio artist who began pasting her work with colorful decals around the streets of Tel Aviv. One of her featured pieces, “Slightly Transparent,” is a collage of these prints on a wooden board.

“A lot of street artists use the materials they find,” Yasinow says. “It’s plywood, it’s reclaimed. They’re environmental artists, they use recycled materials.”

ARTISTS AND TECHNIQUES

Two other artists featured may be familiar to Clevelanders as Dede Bandaid and Nitzan Mintz’s work was displayed throughout Northeast Ohio last year. Their project, also in collaboration with the Cleveland Israel Arts Connection, was titled “Culture Fix CLE: Healing Our Community

Through the Arts” and lined up with the international arts triennial FRONT.

“This (exhibit) is an opportunity to show you how they are artists in the studio, as well as out on the streets,” Yasinow says. “It was something we thought was fun, and it was a great follow up to Dede.”

Other exhibited artists include the art collaborative Broken Fingaz, made up of artists Tant, Deso, Kip and Unga; Brothers of Light; Ben Mashiah, also known as Neo-Apollonia and Noir; Or Bar-El; Noam Dushy, or Swan; Shimon Wanda, or Shimda; Michal Rubin; Guy Bloom, or Dioz; and Itamar Paloge, or Faluja.

The media in the exhibit is eclectic, ranging from digital prints, sculptures, acrylic, watercolor and spray paint on paper, canvas or wood. Giving the free nature of street art as a medium and the various styles and techniques, Yasinow says they had fun displaying the work around the gallery.

“This also posed the entire show some challenges with how do you hang it,” she says. “You don’t want to have everything framed behind glass because that’s not the spirit in which it was created.”

ON VIEW

“Surface Identities: Studio Works by Israeli Street Artists” is on display at the Jewish Federation of Cleveland’s Roe Green Gallery, 25701 Science Park Drive in Beachwood, now through the end of December. Visit during one of the two open houses each month or by appointment. To schedule an appointment or for more information, contact Debbie Yasinow at dyasinow@jewishcleveland.org or 216-593-2890.

An untitled mixed media piece by Nitzan Mintz, left, next to works by Adi Gershon at the Roe Green Gallery.

“Room” and “Self Portrait,” both oil on canvas by Swan.

Yasinow

Southern exposure.

September 10, 2023–January 7, 2024

Plan your visit at cma.org

District Gallery offers art by local, national and international contemporary artists. Our global artist roster spans a variety of mediums and conceptual ideas. We show original paintings, mixed media, photography, prints and sculptures, aiming to offer an unrivaled visual art experience. We strive to provide an art space that is both approachable and welcoming. Whether you are a first-time buyer or a seasoned collector, we appreciate all kinds of art enthusiasts.

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The Van Aken District 3393 Tuttle Road

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Email: info@district-gallery.com

The first exhibition in the West to focus on the art and cultural impact of the area south of the Yangzi River, bringing together around 200 works of art from over 30 private and public institutions worldwide.

The Thousand Buddha Hall and the Pagoda of the “Cloudy Cli ” Monastery from Twelve Views of Tiger Hill, Suzhou, after 1490. Shen Zhou (Chinese, 1427–1509). China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Album leaf; ink and slight color on paper. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund, 1964.371.7

Worldsin transition

AI art is on the front burner

By Carlo Wolff

Artificial Intelligence is the talk of the media, even the metaverse.

It is far more than the buzzword du jour, and its momentum disturbs, even alarms, some. There are those who deplore it, while others celebrate it. But there is no stopping it, so the choice is between resisting and embracing.

AI is rapidly becoming integral to the creative process, whether you’re a writer, a painter, a mixed-media master

or a filmmaker. It scares actors and writers in Hollywood, who went on strike this summer partially in fear of AI’s encroachment. Other kinds of creatives worry AI will take over, essentially sidelining artists of all kinds and destroying such professions as journalism, teaching and painting.

ChatGPT is AI software for writing, based on a large language model type of AI that uses deep learning techniques and huge data sets to comprehend, summarize, generate and

predict new content. Part of understanding AI requires learning its vocabulary – and realizing that AI “gives” to the humans that create from it in an asymmetrical exchange. The question is, how is the share determined?

How are local artists responding to AI? What are they learning and using?

The top AI art generation tools are Midjourney, DALL·E and Stable Di usion, according to AI autodidact Jamal Collins, an East Cleveland-based graphic designer and educator. Midjourney and Stable Di usion appear to – “appear” because AI is hard to nail down – take text prompts and run them through a di usion algorithm. It learns, making it fluid, and di erent from static technology. DALL·E is a neural network, generating new imagery in a process akin to the brain’s.

Collins is the founder of Creative Kids Group, a visual design program for inner-city kids in Akron and Cleveland. He is an AI enthusiast. Not only does he use it in his art, he suggests that refusing to accept it is futile. Nevertheless, if to a lesser degree than the provocative mixed-media artist Kasumi, Collins has reservations.

ONE ARTIST’S VIEW

Here’s how Collins rates current AI technology:

Advantages

• Increased e ciency and productivity in art creation processes

• Exploration of new creative possibilities and styles

• Automation of repetitive tasks, allowing artists to focus on higher-level concepts

• Access to vast amounts of data and inspiration for generating new ideas

Disadvantages

• Potential lack of originality and human touch in AI-generated art

• Ethical concerns regarding ownership, attribution and plagiarism

• Bias in AI algorithms that may perpetuate societal inequalities

• The risk of overreliance on AI, potentially limiting artistic exploration and personal growth

AI mines both public-domain and proprietary art; it’s all a big pile of data to this voracious software, which doesn’t discriminate among its sources. That bothers both Collins and Kasumi, who lives in Cleveland Heights.

Engaging with AI is one way to keep it honest, suggests Collins, a master of branding and marketing.

A 1997 Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate in design from The University of Akron, he says, “As soon as I stepped o campus, I was outdated,” noting designers with computers left him in the dust. So, he bought a computer and set to learning.

It was the dawn of multimedia. Compact disks, DVDs, MP3s were hot; then came powerful smartphones. Eventually, Collins learned how to edit his own videos so he could build a community “around me and my YouTube channel.”

“The burning question about all of this is ethics,” he says, “and biases and things like that.” Because “it’s taking o so fast, I highly recommend anybody and everybody to get in this, to make sure that it is following the right things it’s supposed to follow, right? So it’s not blurring the lines of copyright infringement and things like that.”

Collins is not so much an expert as an explorer: “I’m still

getting in there and learning the pieces and parts, and trying to take away what I could take away and come back and talk about the stu honestly,” he says.

ANOTHER VIEW

Kasumi has a more wary approach. In her absorbing, kinetic cinema, installations and apps, Kasumi aims to “alchemize” contemporary and evolving technology. A multimedia conceptual artist, she knows how to prospect for imagery for her b-roll fantasias. Ask her where AI ends and the human creator begins, and the answer doesn’t come easily. Kasumi distrusts AI, she explains.

“The line between AI and human art creation can get pretty complex and fuzzy,” she says. “Sometimes AI tools are used as helpers, like assistants not unlike filters and e ects built into software used by human artists. They use AI algorithms or software for tasks such as tweaking images, analyzing data, generating ideas or adjusting colors. The AI acts as a creative boost, but the human artist still has the final say and creative vision.”

Another scenario has AI and humans as partners, with the former incorporating the latter’s suggestions into the work of art. “The AI system actively contributes ideas, suggests concepts or generates content, and the human artist incorporates those contributions into the final artwork,” Kasumi says. “It’s a collaborative e ort where both the AI and the human artist influence the outcome, blurring the lines between AI and human creativity.”

The obverse might find AI more dominant, shaping guidelines and objectives the human provides “to let the AI generate the artwork on its own. The artist becomes more like a curator or facilitator, shaping and refining the output produced by the AI rather than directly creating it,” she says.

“It’s not always easy to pinpoint exactly where AI ends and the human art creator begins,” Kasumi says. “It can be

Above: An image of a pharaoh manipulated using AI by Jamal Collins. Opposite Page: An image of a child created using AI by Jamal Collins. Images courtesy of Collins.

THE LEARNING CURVE

Some say AI is the fourth great revolution of the past century, following computers, the internet and the smartphone. What’s di cult to predict is the potential symbiosis between AI and its user, though our bond with the iPhone and its siblings provides an inkling.

“Before computers came into play, before Photoshop and Illustrator, we were doing all of this stu by hand,” Collins says. “We didn’t even have digital cameras. So to even manipulate the stu we needed a scanner, right?”

Using Google Images, Collins grabs images of clouds and color patterns. Before Google, Collins had to go to the library for pictures of clouds, or take them himself and then print them himself because the camera wasn’t digital.

“So, you might as well think, jumping from that to being able to just type in clouds and get high-resolution pictures of clouds was almost like AI and kind of revolutionary and changing the aspect of how we created as artists then,” he says.

Such coziness doesn’t sit as well with Kasumi, who suggests in the AI-dominated future, artists could be “prompt masters” with select celebrities ruling the field “with no physical input –a natural extension of the field known as conceptual art.”

Asked for ways in which she incorporates AI into her work, Kasumi says it’s more about “how is AI incorporating my work into it.”

Every image viewable online is fair game to be vacuumed into the gargantuan data sets of LAION-5B used to create “art” by such tools as DALL·E, Midjourney, etc., says Kasumi.

“LAION-5B calls itself a nonprofit organization, but through clever legal means, generates massive profits, much the same way research done at NASA – funded by the tax-paying public – is then used by corporations to generate profit,” she says. “AI does not distinguish between copyrighted and non-

copyrighted material.”

Not all AI is doom and gloom for her, however. She now understands mushrooms on what one might call a cellular level.

Kasumi recently experimented with a motion capture suit at Photonic, an animation studio in Mayfield. The owner plugged her into such a suit, five times too large for her, and collected data from her movements. He fed that data into software that used it to generate the movements of a mannequin. In another software, he attached abstract animated objects to those movements.

“Finally, in Stable Di usion AI software, they came up with the prompts: mushroom, psychedelic and the like,” she says. “The outcome is me moving around as an ever-evolving collection of animated mushrooms.”

subjective and depend on the context and the choices made by the human artist throughout the creative process.”

Above: “Visions of Ecstasy,” a non-AI image by Kasumi, 96 x 54 inches. It is based on a still black and white screen capture of Marilyn Monroe. She created the image by glitching and manipulating certain parameters. It was purchased by businessman and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert for one of his properties. Below: Image created by Kasumi, who typed in text prompts to create it using Firefly by Adobe. Images courtesy of Kasumi.

Beck Center for Arts in Lakewood offers professional theater, youth theater, Education classes for all ages and abilities, and all skill levels in dance, music, theater, and visual arts. Beck Center also offers Creative Arts Therapies, and free visual arts exhibitions throughout the year.

Steve Wagner

Roger Mastroianni

Margie Hackett

Jess Cavender

Lori Kella is a photographer by medium, but calling her a creator of evolving miniature worlds may be more accurate.

“Making things to photograph” as she refers to it, involves building detailed models based on semi-realistic natural landscapes and incorporating surreal elements to capture the photo. It sometimes involves tearing the models apart.

Kella has experimented with various iterations of her unique photographic form since her days at the Cleveland Institute of Art in the mid-1990s. She’s continuously reimagined the themes and style throughout her career, focusing now on the real-time changes Lake Erie is undergoing. Residing in the Collinwood neighborhood of Cleveland on the shore, she’s drawn to explore the landscape and stories surrounding it.

“A lot of it is about storytelling,” Kella says during a June interview at the William Busta Gallery in Collinwood, where she recently had a show on view. “So sometimes they’ll be very personal narratives. Sometimes they’ll be things

By Amanda Koehn

from the news, but I just see in some ways the setting or the place is very important. And for me, that others can kind of enter it. ... Even if it’s somewhere you’ve never been, you see the landscape and kind of connect to it, and it’s familiar in some way.”

Kella, 48, was one of two Cleveland artists shown in the national contemporary art exhibition “State of the Art,” which was on view at the Akron Art Museum this past winter. She has also been showing her series “Shifting Ground,” created from 20212022, which signaled a new phase in her process. She’s still experimenting with depicting the climate change-impacted landscape, shore and the messages surrounding it.

“I think it also conceptually works with this idea that you may look out at the lake or the landscape and it may look beautiful and fine, but they’re sort of these darker currents in our environment that we’re not addressing,” she says. “So for me, this sort of tension also speaks to the way that things can be sort of beautiful and askew at the same time.”

PHOTOGRAPHIC POSSIBILITIES

Kella was born in St. Joseph, Mich., in 1974 and grew up in the small southwest Michigan city. She has one older sister and her father worked as a mechanical engineer, while her mother was both artistic and trained in science.

“My mom definitely has an artistic side, and she always did a lot of ... sewing and those kinds of fiber arts crafts and di erent things in the fashion industry,” Kella says.

When Kella was a teenager, her family moved to Northeast Ohio and she graduated from Mentor High School, which she notes had a good art program. She struggled to decide whether to pursue the sciences or art. Although she chose art, her science skills show up through the detailed way she crafts natural scenes. She’s also made maps and satellite imagery for her artwork, and worked in ophthalmic photography early in her career, continuing that science connection, she explains.

While her family moved to Asheville, N.C., Kella stayed to attend the Cleveland Institute of Art for undergrad. While she

Lori Kella creates surreal, landscape inspired scenes to turn her camera on

didn’t start college on the photography track, in a first-year elective class at CIA she “fell in love with the possibilities.”

“My approach to photography is much less traditional,” Kella says. “It’s never been about the camera or capturing images – even though I enjoy that and I teach photography, so I really understand that language. But what really hooked me in a way was experimentation that was encouraged at CIA. And once I sort of discovered that you could arrange things – even just a still life and photograph it – that’s what

really hooked me.”

She graduated in 1997, and completed her master’s degree in photography from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. After, she moved back to Northeast Ohio for her connections to the art world and teaching opportunities.

While still in graduate school, Kella exhibited at SPACES in a show William Busta helped curate. Busta has been exhibiting Kella’s work since.

“It’s so thrilling to watch a career like Lori’s to grow,” Busta says. “She has a direction in her career, but it

keeps changing and she keeps finding new ways to reimagine what she’s doing – sometimes looking at the stars, sometimes looking at the Earth from space, sometimes getting to the very, very intimate parts of her life, ranging out.”

SCULPTING SCENES

For the SPACES exhibit in 2001, Kella used tiny sea glass beads to make topographical maps of bodies of water. She placed the beads on photo paper to make photographs to look like satellite imagery.

Above: Lori Kella at the William Busta Gallery, surrounded by her exhibition on view there. Canvas Photo / Amanda Koehn. Opposite page: “Overpass and Undercurrents” by Lori Kella (2022) from her “Shifting Ground” series. Archival pigment print, 20 x 30 inches. Photos courtesy of the artist.

“Shifting Ground” by Lori Kella (2022). Digital chromogenic print, 45 x 30 inches.

“It was really kind of this play between sort of digital technology and the handmade,” she says. “It’s kind of the early days of like Google Maps.”

She eventually shifted to creating dioramas or model landscapes to photograph. To create them, she’ll collect small rocks, driftwood and other natural items from the beach. She also incorporates architectural modeling supplies, paper creations and drawn elements to develop the scene.

Her “Strange Crossings” series debuted in 2015 at the William Busta Gallery. It deals with transoceanic migration, natural disasters and the depth and mystery of the ocean – a career highlight, she notes.

While natural landscapes made into fictional scenes has been a theme throughout Kella’s career, in 2018, she began focusing specifically on Lake Erie and the environmental issues it faces, as well as restoration e orts. The shift stemmed from being on the lake daily and noticing abnormal freeze and thaw cycles around that time.

“I was just interested in the change of the landscape and certainly I have done work previously about climate change before this, and was also feeling like nothing seemed to be happening or moving, and maybe I should tackle this again ... it became even more important,” she says.

Kella is interested in the tension between the real landscape and the more fictional elements she incorporates – sometimes done through monochromatic color schemes and varying flat and three-dimensional aspects. Her photos depict the destruction of the shoreline and nearby areas, but also consider how to protect those resources.

“It’s always that push and pull between making something

that’s believable or that you can immerse yourself in, but having lots of little things to kind of entice you visually that sort of give you cues” that it’s not a real landscape, she says.

Owning galleries on and o since 1989, Busta works to identify great artists while they are still coming up. Something special about Kella is she continues to challenge herself and her audience, he says. Each show of hers is a little bit “other than expectations.”

Kella adds, “I don’t know if it’s our job, but what we do or find exciting is to challenge (expectations) and always kind of push the boundaries, even if the themes have overlapped for years.”

Describing Kella’s work for the Akron Art Museum, independent curator Liz Carney wrote, “In ethereal images of a constructed microcosmic world and its undoing, Kella reminds us that the real world o ers ephemeral, tenuous, irreplaceable beauty.”

NEW CONSTRUCTIONS

Kella is married to artist Michael Loderstedt. Their son, Ethan Loderstedt, is studying architecture at Washington University in St. Louis.

In addition to her artistic practice, Kella taught photography and art at Kent State University for many years and at Oberlin College for a year. She’s now in her third year as part of the visual art faculty at Laurel School in Shaker Heights.

“There’s something really empowering about working with students and showing them how to use art to find their own voice, to make their own stories ... I really love that,” she says, adding Laurel is a supportive environment for her and the

“Fractured Landscape: Landing” by Lori Kella (2022) from “Shifting Ground.” Archival pigment print, 18 x 24 inches.

other practicing artists on the faculty.

Kella’s recent work specifically looks at the lake over a 20-year history and “more personal narratives sort of along that shoreline, and also looking again at this sort of intersection of the built environment and the natural world,” she says. She often kayaks out to find scenes for sketches.

Her most recent body of work, “Shifting Ground,” began with an about 8-foot-long diorama Kella constructed of the Lake Erie shoreline. She aimed to show the impact of erosion over the last few years, and incorporated “kind of makeshift things built into the shoreline,” like balconies or barriers, some of which were newly constructed, some old and in disrepair, she says.

When she began photographing it, she was unsatisfied.

“It just wasn’t giving me the e ect – it wasn’t creating the sort of emotional dialogue about how I felt like the landscape was just crumbling and deteriorating,” she says.

She ended up tearing pieces of the diorama apart and photographing it fractured on the light table.

“To me, just the artistic process to make that was so satisfying to see that come to fruition,” she recalls.

“Shifting Ground” was first exhibited at Photocentric –Michael Loderstedt’s now-closed Collinwood gallery focused on contemporary photography – in spring 2022, and showed at the McDonough Museum of Art at Youngstown State University earlier this year.

In 2020, Kella was among 61 artists invited to be part of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s national “State of the Art” exhibition. The exhibit addresses how contemporary art reflects the current time and how it connects to one’s sense of self, home and planet. Along with Amy Casey, Kella was one of two Cleveland artists selected after the curators visited their studios. A section of the exhibit was displayed at the Akron Art Museum this past winter, including Kella’s works.

ON VIEW

•Cleveland Institute of Art 2023 Alumni Exhibition, “Come, Rest Here by My Side,” which includes work by Lori Kella, is on view through Aug. 11 in Reinberger Gallery, 11610 Euclid Ave., Cleveland.

•Kella will have a solo exhibition in the William Busta Gallery, 15517 Waterloo Road, Suite 2, Cleveland, in spring 2024

While working five days a week at Laurel during the school year makes finding studio time a bit more challenging, she says the summers o allow a good couple months to focus on her artwork. She’s working toward a solo exhibit in Busta’s gallery next spring. She also currently has work in CIA’s 2023 Alumni Exhibition, which is on view through Aug. 11.

She adds one of the biggest challenges she’s faced as an artist has been dealing with the abyss left when a body of work is complete and deciding what’s next. “It’s just the natural cycle of an artist, but it can be kind of daunting, right?”

Read a 2022 Canvas feature about the “State Of The Art” exhibition, featuring Lori Kella, at canvascle.com

“The Diver” by Lori Kella (2014) from her “Strange Crossings” series. Digital chromogenic print, 40 x 30 inches.

“Eroding Shoreline (The Calm Before the Storm)” by Lori Kella (2021) from “Shifting Ground.” Archival pigment print, 20 x 40 inches.

New Holocaust Exhibition makes Cleveland Premiere THE GIRL IN THE DIARY: SEARCHING FOR RYWKA FROM THE ŁÓDŹ GHETTO

Opening at the Maltz Museum in Beachwood October 2023

[CLEVELAND] – The Maltz Museum announces a new special exhibition making its Cleveland premiere in fall of 2023. The Girl in the Diary: Searching for Rywka from Lodz Ghetto tells the remarkable story of 1945, when a Soviet doctor found a school notebook in the liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp that had been written by a teenager named Rywka Lipszyc during her incarceration in the Lodz Ghetto from October 1943 to April 1944. It is the testament of a Jewish girl who lost her siblings and parents, but never lost hope despite moments of doubt. Through excerpts from the diary, expert commentary, photos, multimedia, and historical artifacts, the exhibition allows visitors to briefly walk the streets of the Lodz ghetto and get to know one of its residents, Rywka Lipszyc. For more information, ticket pricing, and group tour discounts, visit www.maltzmuseum.org or call 216-593-0575.

The Girl in the Diary special exhibition was developed by The Galicia Museum in Poland. “Working on this exhibition we never found a photograph of Rywka Lipszyc. Despite this, the exhibition has a very strong visual photographic component. As there are vast archives of the photographs documenting the daily life and struggle in the Lodz Ghetto, designing the exhibition we utilized a number of photographs made by the three most known photographers working there. I like to think that somewhere in those photographs or in one of the thousands of other archival pictures taken in the Lodz Ghetto there is Rywka smiling at us, only we do not know this yet,” said Curator Tomasz Strug.

The archival photographs illustrating the story of Rywka Lipszyc are the work of the three most famous photographers of the Lodz Ghetto: Henryk Ross, Mendel Grossman, and Walter Genewein, who preserved the realities of ghetto life on color slides. Stored in closed containers, underground, in hiding, many have su ered partial damage. They present only part of the picture captured on the slide. They are fragmentary, just like the whole story of Rywka, which — like these negatives — had to wait many years to be brought to light.

Jakub Nowakowski, former Director of the Galicia Jewish Museum, said, “The unchained voice of this orthodox Jewish girl reaching us so many years after the Holocaust, her unshakable faith and devotion, but also restless e orts of the countless people from various continents to identify the author of texts and finally, the mystery surrounding her fate - this was all material for a fascinating and thought-provoking exhibition. We knew it right away.”

Unique historical artifacts and documents from museums in Poland, Israel, Germany, Belgium, and the United States combine to tell the story of The Girl in the Diary, which is mainly, but not exclusively, the story of women.

Most of the wartime narratives and memories of the German occupation concentrate of the fate of men — soldiers, politicians, leaders. In Rywka’s world, the perspective is the opposite. Men appear in the diary, but remain in the shadows, in the background. They are present, but not dominant. The world we get to know from Rywka’s diary is populated by women and its structure is created by relations between them. It is filled with their pain and longing, their courage and daily

battles, their fear.

The exhibition concentrates on this aspect, bringing visitors into the world of the women Rywka describes in her diary. In order to not interfere with this unique narrative, all the commentaries used to supplement the text of the diary were also prepared by women. The idea for commentaries strongly refers to the Jewish tradition of explaining and interpreting sacred texts. In this symbolic way, the exhibition refers to Rywka’s devotion to the tradition in which she grew up, to her unwavering faith in God and God’s care.

The Girl in the Diary: Searching for Rywka from Lodz Ghetto will be on view October 25, 2023 – April 28, 2024 at the Maltz Museum (2929 Richmond Road, Beachwood; 216-593-0575; www.maltzmuseum.org).

About the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage: Located approximately twenty minutes from downtown Cleveland in the suburb of Beachwood, the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage is housed in an award-winning building crafted from Jerusalem stone, uniquely set into its landscape. O ering two permanent collections plus a gallery dedicated to presenting world-class special exhibitions, the Maltz Museum is rooted in the Jewish value of respect for all humanity, telling universal stories of hope and resilience to educate and inspire a more just, civil, and inclusive society.

COMMUNITY ANCHOR

By Alyssa Schmitt

Karamu House stands as a testament to the transformative power of the arts and the resilience of a community. With a history dating back over a century, the theater has become an anchor of cultural expression, social justice and inclusivity.

From its humble beginnings as a settlement house to its status today as one of the oldest African American theaters in the United States, the theater now in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood has consistently enriched the lives of countless individuals as it showcases the diverse talents of artists and serves as a beacon for the Black community in Northeast Ohio.

A HISTORICAL TAPESTRY

The roots of Karamu House can be traced back to 1915, when Russell and Rowena Jelli e founded the Playhouse Settlement at E. 38th Street and Central Avenue. The pair had studied social work at Oberlin College and after briefly living in Chicago, they moved back to Cleveland to open a settlement house as the movement to create communal spaces and solve problems together in urban neighborhoods was rising.

Tony F. Sias, president and CEO of Karamu House, says the Jelli es originally opened the settlement house to help people who looked like them – primarily Eastern European immigrants who needed to become acclimated to urban industrial cities after coming from primarily rural areas.

As the Great Migration started, many new African

American residents were moving into the settlement’s neighborhood. The Jelli es were committed to serving the people in the community and as the neighborhood changed, thus began the integration of the settlement house.

“The story goes in 1917, two little Black boys were on the front porch of Karamu House, and they saw people inside doing activities and games and theater and things of that nature,” Sias says. “They ask Mrs. Jelli e, could they come in, and that was the beginning of the integration of Karamu House.”

The Playhouse Settlement relocated to its current home in the 1930s. A decade later, it changed its name to Karamu House, a Swahili word meaning a “place of joyful gathering.”

Over its lifetime, Karamu House has played a pivotal role in nurturing the talents of African American artists, most notably including one of the most popular writers and

Karamu House harnesses storytelling for a more equitable, compassionate society beyond the theater

Offutt

Sias Pope

playwrights of the 20th century, Langston Hughes.

Hughes, who grew up partially in Cleveland, taught classes at the theater and debuted many of his works on its stage including “Black Nativity,” which is performed by the theater yearly. (Last year was the first year it moved to Playhouse Square to be performed and it’s planned to be performed there again this year).

Other notable figures who have graced the stage there include Ruby Dee, Robert Guillaume, Ron O’Neal, Bill Cobbs, Ivan Dixon, Minnie Gentry and more recently, James Pickens (“Grey’s Anatomy”), Imani Hakim (“Everybody Hates Chris”), and Debra Byrd (vocal coach and arranger for “American Idol” and “Canadian Idol”).

For current Karamu House actor Drew Pope, who has been with the theater since 2018, being welcomed into its history is unlike his experience at other theaters.

“It’s like you’re putting yourself in the quilt of the timeline here,” he says. “In other words, it’s a blessing. … There’s a host of other names and talents that have come through here, and now you’re a part of it and you’re in the same vain as them.”

A JOYFUL GATHERING PLACE

Out of the 93 theaters – from community and professional to academic – that call Northeast Ohio home, only Karamu is dedicated to honoring the vastness of the Black experience, Sias says. It’s through that dedication that the theater is able to embrace and reflect the diversity of the human experience.

“These are still very universal stories, that any human being can find a point of entry because it’s really dealing with the human condition,” he says.

When choosing a play to perform, there are multiple qualities a script needs to be selected, Sias explains. It needs

to find joy, revolve around social justice and equity, and also educate as well as entertain.

To see that in action, one only needs to look at the series of shows lined up for its upcoming 2023-2024 season, which includes “Clyde’s,” “The Breakfast at the Bookstore,” “It Happened in Atlanta,” and “Choir Boy.”

“This is a perfect example of being very intentional about a season that you have social issues – whether it’s around incarceration, whether it’s circa the Hough Riots, Atlanta being a central spring break activity and the coming-of-age story,” Sias says.

While many creatives have found a home in the theater, the same is true for those who visit. The audience has a sense of belonging and ownership that it’s their space when they walk in, says Treva O utt, who is directing “Clyde’s.”

“When they come in, there’s a freedom,” she says. “There’s not a sense of having to be quiet and keep the hands on my lap. … They clap, they stand, they might talk back to the actors at times.”

One of the longstanding traditions at Karamu is to have a receiving line at the end of performances where actors are still in their costumes. It gives the actors a chance to thank the audience and allows the audience to interact with the actors, which can lead to some unfiltered reactions, O utt says.

“It’s a unique experience, but it’s a beautiful one,” she says. “It follows what Karamu means – a joyful gathering place. So if everyone is expecting a place where they can gather, then (it) builds a community as part of that.”

While the Jelli es were not artists themselves, they felt like if you strive toward excellence and mastery in your art form it will influence all other aspects of one’s life holistically, says Sias. That sentiment still holds true today with the artists who come to Karamu.

Above: Muhammad Ali, second from left, visits the Hanna Lounge at Karamu House. Photo courtesy of Karamu House. Opposite page: A rendering of what Karamu House’s outdoor stage could look like when construction is complete later this year. Rendering / Robert P. Madison International, Inc.

“The personal work – what you as the artist, actor or actress (gives), mixed in with the help that they o er, the olive branch they reach out – it just ends in success,” Pope says.

A THRIVING FUTURE

It wasn’t long ago that Karamu faced an unsteady future. In 2015, there were financial issues and a dwindling audience that almost made the theater close its doors, Sias explains. However, with his leadership, it addressed the issues and rebuilt its trust with the community. Now, it can focus on its thriving future.

That future includes a renovation to the historic building that preserves its legacy and honors its history through

additions like the Hughes suite, where artists and residents will be able to gather and work.

Other additions include the Smucker’s Q89 Bistro – short for its intersection, Quincy Avenue and E. 89th Street – so guests can gather before a performance to eat, or to enjoy a cocktail after the show. Other renovations include a new marquee, updated dressing rooms, an enclosed pathway connecting the north and south sides of the building and an outdoor stage for the warmer months.

As renovations finish – which is estimated to happen by the end of the year – Karamu House looks to the next 100 years with a goal to remain at the forefront of the arts scene in Cleveland and beyond. And as recently as mid-July, the theater was awarded a $4 million challenge grant from Cleveland’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation to support the remaining infrastructure and capital improvements to the campus.

By harnessing the power of storytelling and artistic expression, Karamu House aspires to create a more inclusive, equitable and compassionate society, Sias says.

“You don’t have much diversity in the ecology of theater in this region without Karamu. We are a beacon,” Sias says. “We have been steadfast for 108 years through ups and down, through leadership changes, through economic crisis, but still we stand. It’s a story of resilience, of fortitude. We represent an organization who, for a while, was just surviving and who is now thriving.”

ON VIEW

• “Clyde’s”: Sept. 22 to Oct. 15

• “The Breakfast at the Bookstore”: Jan. 26 to Feb. 18, 2024

• “It Happened in Atlanta”: March 8 to March 30, 2024

• “Choir Boy”: April 26 to May 19, 2024

Clockwise from above: Playwright and Karamu alumnus Langston Hughes. Karamu House’s old sign. Photos courtesy of Karamu House. Actors perform “Red Summer” at Karamu House earlier this year; from left: Maya Nicholson, Bradford Terrence Eason, Carlos Antonio Cruz and Mary-Francis R. Miller. Photo / Craig Taylor

SPOTLIGHT ON DANCERS iN NORTHEAST OHiO

Dance is an art form that thrives slightly under the radar compared to visual art or theater in Northeast Ohio. A professional career is demanding on a dancer’s body, requires years of training, often starting at a young age, and usually relies on a touch of luck to be successful. Moreover, it entails mental challenges inherent to all creative crafts, which have been further intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this annual fall stage issue of Canvas, we highlight a few talented and dedicated dancers – each associated with di erent local companies – who proudly call Cleveland home.

MARLA ALEYDA

Age: 20 • Home: Beachwood • Dances: Cleveland Ballet

Marla Aleyda says it wasn’t until this year – her almost fifth on-contract with the Cleveland Ballet as a company artist – did she feel like a “real ballerina.”

A lifelong dancer, she was raised in the Cleveland Ballet company. Her mother, Gladisa Guadalupe, is the ballet’s co-founder and artistic director, and when Aleyda was 18 months old, Guadalupe began bringing her daughter into the studio.

“She didn’t want to pay for a babysitter,” Aleyda jokes.

Now a lover of all things ballet, Aleyda says she hated the art form at the start of her journey.

“For the longest time I would sit during class – like, refuse to participate,” she recalls.

However, she started to get more heavily involved in ballet at around 13, when she auditioned for the School of American Ballet in New York City. But, Aleyda was not accepted.

“I was heartbroken,” she says. “But after that I was like, you know what? It’s a sign. Everything happens for a reason. And then I stuck with it, and I was like, soon enough, something will happen. And then when I was 16, I got o ered a contract with Cleveland Ballet and I was like, this is it – this is what I was waiting for.”

Aside from the School of Cleveland Ballet, where Aleyda received most of her technical training, she also spent a summer at Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet in Brooklyn, N.Y. At the School of Cleveland Ballet, she was in

ON VIEW

Performances at Playhouse Square’s Connor Palace, 1615 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Visit clevelandballet.org for tickets and more information.

• “Carmen & Other Works”: Sept. 22-23

• “The Nutcracker”: Dec. 14-23

• “Aurora: A Sleeping Beauty Story”: April 26-27, 2024

the youth company. And during her junior year of high school, she signed a contract with the company to be a company artist.

At one point, she danced, taught ballet and attended regular high school classes at Andrews Osborne Academy in Willoughby all at once. She ended up taking advantage of Ashworth College’s online schooling to complete her studies and have enough room in her day for dance.

Now, she’s 20, and has been dancing professionally for almost five years. Aleyda says being signed so young is a rarity in the dance world.

“That is extremely rare,” Aleyda says. “This is why I never want to leave (Cleveland Ballet), for this reason.”

She explains that some larger dance companies have second company or trainee programs where they keep dancers for years, sometimes until the ages of 26 or 27, but never o cially

ALEYDA | CONTINUED ON PAGE 33

“Since a very early age, Marla showed a natural talent for movement. She possesses a very innate natural quality of movement that is only seen in very matured dancers. Her magnetic performance quality is almost feather like. Her musicality is precise, her execution is captivating, and her overall performance has a fierce characteristic.”

Gladisa Guadalupe, artistic director, Cleveland Ballet (and Aleyda’s mother)

Susan Bestul Photography

New Image Photography

AHNA BONNETTE

Age: 21 • Home: Rocky River • Dances: GroundWorks DanceTheater

When Ahna Bonnette was 9 years old, it first clicked that dancing professionally could be a real option. After years of training hard, in 2022 that became a reality when she joined GroundWorks DanceTheater – a company unusually good in terms of its comfortable environment and opportunities to work with choreographers from around the world, she says. It’s all kept her “happy ever since.”

Bonnette describes her style as contemporary, but notes her “secret little love” for ballet also plays a role.

“I really like taking classical structures of dance and distorting them and contorting them ... kind of breaking the structure and the mold a little bit,” she says.

Growing up in Scottsdale, Ariz., Bonnette’s mother, a former NFL cheerleader for the Philadelphia Eagles, started her in ballet classes at 2 years old.

“Honestly since that day, I don’t think a day has gone by in my life that I haven’t danced,” Bonnette says.

At age 9, she met her mentor, dancer and artistic director Peter Chu. That’s also when she first got into contemporary dance, enjoying its lack of rules compared to ballet or jazz, she says.

Coming up in a generation where competitive dance is often the main route to good training, Bonnette says she struggled with finding good teachers and with the ultra-competitive nature of the system. She also graduated high school at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic – another challenge, as the world shut down just as she was auditioning for dance schools. She worried about having to hide her facial expressions behind a mask during auditions. While her studio was closed, she worked out and did ballet in her living room, but it was di erent and she felt a “big impact” dancing again after.

“I had to kind of get my head back on straight and be like, maybe my body doesn’t feel the same as it did before the pandemic, but this is just something new that we’re going to have to adjust to,” she says. “And I had to kind of be like, no

“Ahna has a remarkable physical range and theatrical sense that captivates audiences. As a creative collaborator, I find she is compassionate and aware in ways beyond her years.”

David Shimotakahara, Founding Artistic Director, GroundWorks DanceTheater

ON VIEW

FALL PERFORMANCE SERIES:

• Playhouse Square’s Allen Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Oct. 13-14; 1407 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Info and tickets at groundworksdance.org.

• The Knight Stage at Akron Civic Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Nov. 3-4; 182 S. Main St., Akron. Info and tickets at groundworksdance.org

negative judgment on myself.”

Bonnette was accepted to State University of New York at Purchase to pursue a BFA in dance, but stayed only one year –it didn’t feel right at the time, she says. Instead, she joined Chu touring the country. They also spent a month-and-a-half in Germany with the Augsburg Ballet.

From there, she began auditioning for professional companies, including GroundWorks, which is based in the Shaker Square neighborhood of Cleveland and performs on stages throughout Northeast Ohio.

“I ended up falling in love with the company the second I got here,” she says, adding she was surprised to find she loved Cleveland too, noting the city’s underrated charm.

After signing her first professional contract with GroundWorks in June 2022, she just signed onto her second

BONNETTE | CONTINUED ON PAGE 33

Dale Dong

ANTONIO MORILLO

Age: 32 • Home: Cleveland • Dances: Verb, “Ohio Contemporary Ballet”

Antonio Morillo found his way to dance later in life than many professional dancers. It was during his first year at Point Park University’s Conservatory of Performing Arts in Pittsburgh, where was he was studying musical theater.

Financial complications forced him to leave, but he was determined to continue learning the art of dance, he says.

Morillo picked up his studies at Valencia College in Orlando, Fla., where he received a two-year degree. Then, he attended the University of South Florida in Tampa to receive a Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance performance, and he spent his last semester starting his career at Verb, “Ohio Contemporary Ballet” in Shaker Heights in 2016.

Morillo already faced hardships due to starting his dance journey at an older age, he explains. But he encountered one of his most di cult obstacles during his first year at Verb Ballet as a company dancer.

“I actually broke my leg on stage while performing in Tremont at Lincoln Park,” he recalls. “So, I broke my ankle and my fibula, and I had about eight to 10 months before I was back with the company.”

Despite this setback, and the fact that Morillo was stationed to a wheelchair, he choreographed a group piece featured in the Martha Graham Dance Company’s “Next at Graham” show in New York City.

“It’s taken me many years to overcome that serious injury, but I’m stronger than ever and I feel like it helped me so much to become a better performer and teacher by watching the company and seeing how other people make this di cult

profession work on a day-to-day basis,” he says. “Really focusing on how the teachers were delivering the material and watching the di erent processes with each choreographer.”

Morillo describes himself as an “eclectic” dancer. He has been trained in modern, jazz and contemporary, along with having Martha Graham modern dance and Limón technique training. He says his knowledge of di erent styles has led him to identify as a repertory dancer.

“I pride myself on my versatility and my artistry as a storyteller, and that’s really what I would focus on as a performer,” Morillo says. “I do enjoy contemporary work I would say more than a classical piece, but I always welcome the challenge to better my classical abilities.”

Morillo had di culty mastering classical abilities due to his late introduction to ballet, he says. He spent the early years of his life moving around di erent military bases as his father was in the military for 23 years.

“There were no dance schools on the bases I was at, so I didn’t even know dance was a career until I was living o military bases in Orlando,” he says.

He says he believes his commitment to the art of dance has

MORILLO | CONTINUED ON PAGE 33

“Antonio is a versatile dancer, able to move seamlessly from ballet to contemporary dance to musical theater. He is also a fine teacher and choreographer.”

Margaret Carlson, producing artistic director, Verb, “Ohio Contemporary Ballet”

ON VIEW

•Pandemonium, Sept. 9; Cleveland Public Theatre, 6415 Detroit Ave., Cleveland

Courtesy of Verb

ALEYDA | CONTINUED FROM PAGE 30

hire them.

“Which is really sad,” Aleyda says. “We see like these dancers that are stuck in these companies get burnt out and not love it anymore because no one’s giving them the opportunities that they deserve.”

Cleveland Ballet – which rehearses in Bedford Heights and performs on Cleveland’s Playhouse Square stages – employs a di erent type of policy, Aleyda explains.

“I’ve never seen a company hire such young dancers to be in a company,” she says. “It’s amazing because there’s also such a large mix. It’s not just older, more seasoned dancers, it’s young dancers. ... Or younger dancers like myself who have been in the company for four, five-plus years. And it’s just a really good mix.”

Aleyda enjoys contemporary dance, but her favorite style is still classical ballet, she says. In fact, she was able to perform in an iconic ballet role this past December.

“I got casted in one of my dream roles in ‘The Nutcracker’ for the first time this past December,” she said. “So, I got to do ‘Sugar Plum.’ It’s every little girl’s dream.”

She is also an artistic associate at the School of Cleveland Ballet, meaning her week consists of class every morning, two sets of rehearsal and teaching at night.

BONNETTE | CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31

year. Bonnette is one of five dancers in the company, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary season.

“It felt homey, and it didn’t feel like it was a competition,” she says of her audition for GroundWorks. “It’s a special environment ... I’ve never been to an audition like that in my life. All the other ones felt very cutthroat.”

She describes Founding Artistic Director David Shimotakahara as “the most caring, loving, thoughtful boss and director, and brings in the most amazing choreographers,” to work with. Also noting its educational outreach – GroundWorks works with public schools to teach and perform for students –she says the company is a special place altogether.

One of her favorite performances was her first with

MORILLO | CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32

propelled him in his career rather than his natural-born ability.

“It’s tremendously hard work,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what level you come in at (or) what age you come in at, it really matters how hungry you are and how hard working you are. I mean, there’s a lot of times where I’ve just outworked the people around me. I wasn’t the best in the room, I wasn’t a natural dancer. I wasn’t natural at turning or doing any kind of balletic stu . So, it’s been a long journey for me.”

He improves his technique by constantly challenging himself to try new things.

“For me personally, I’ve just tried to search my weakest points in my technique or in my dynamics,” Morillo says. “My ability to achieve di erent qualities in my movement and try to expand my mind as much as I can. It’s been di cult, but I would say once I joined Verb, that kind of really helped me become even more well-rounded than I already was because the repertory is so diverse.”

A typical day for Morillo at Verb consists of class in the mornings starting at 10 a.m., and then multiple rehearsal sessions stretching until 4 p.m. He then has performances on

“The way that I would describe all the company artists, they’re people who need to dance,” she says. “They have to be there. Like this is what makes them them. And that’s just another beautiful thing. We all want to be there, and the reason why we’re there is because we love it.”

Although Aleyda loves ballet and has devoted her young life to it, her future plans do not completely revolve around it. She also has other career interests, like opening a medical spa.

“I love making people feel good,” she says. “That also comes with performing and everything, you know? But making other people feel beautiful, I love that. So, I would love to get my esthetician license or something like that.”

Aleyda also says she wants to lead children in dance therapy, bringing together her passions for dance and helping others. She plans to pursue a master’s degree in psychology to achieve this dream.

“I know that children just want to communicate, and of course they don’t have the tools to do that,” she adds. “So, I feel that (dance therapy) would be something really great for children and for the parents ... and hopefully, that’ll start something.”

GroundWorks, a work by Rena Butler at Cain Park in Cleveland Heights in summer 2022.

“It was a kind of a creepy piece,” Bonnette says. “It was a little bit darker and we got to play a lot of characters, and playing a dark character on that stage at night was just so much fun.”

Looking ahead, Bonnette says she wants “to stay on the stage for as long as I can.” Also interested in choreographing and behind-the-scenes aspects like costume design –opportunities she gets to try at GroundWorks – she’s in the right place.

“I love being on the artistic side of the dance as well as being the body and the dancer,” she says.

- Amanda Koehn

Fridays and Saturdays.

Morillo says he likes the way Verb functions due to its diverse repertoire and its intimate size.

“The diverse works, the small company, everybody is working with everybody,” he says. “It’s hard, but I feel it’s so gratifying and so fulfilling to really be able to be invested in the work and not feel like you’re kind of waiting around all the time for a role. There’s a lot more companies (that) have many other dancers where there’s a lot of people just waiting on the side or they’re understudies.”

Now in his eighth season with Verb, Morillo is looking at his next steps. He says he will either audition for a new company or attend a master’s degree program geared toward professional dancers transitioning to teaching.

“The leg thing really taught me that you can have all the plans in the world for this and that, but at the end of the day, life is going to take you where it’s going to take you,” Morillo says. “I’ve kind of gone with the flow for the past couple years, and I’m open to seeing what possibilities present themselves because you just never know.”

-Nora Igelnik

- Nora Igelnik

STAGE LISTINGS

1ST TEAM ACTOR’S STUDIO

156 Main St. Westlake

: angelaboehmcasting.com/1st-team

440-465-3355

ALLEGHENY JAZZ SOCIETY

3 Pepper Creek Drive Pepper Pike : alleghenyjazz.org

216-956-0886

APOLLO’S FIRE

3091 Mayfield Road, #217 Cleveland Heights : apollosfire.org

216-320-0012

BEACHWOOD ARTS COUNCIL

25225 Fairmount Blvd.

Beachwood : beachwoodartscouncil.org

216-595-3400

BECK CENTER FOR THE ARTS

17801 Detroit Ave.

Lakewood : beckcenter.org

216-521-2540

2023-2024 Season

• Sept. 22 to Oct. 22, 2023: “Cat’s Paw”

• Dec. 1 to 30, 2023: “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”

• Feb. 9 to 25, 2024: “Ride the Cyclone”

• April 5 to May 5, 2024: “Jitney”

• May 31 to June 30, 2024: “A Doll’s House, Part 2”

• July 12 to Aug. 11, 2024: “Beautiful, the Carole King Musical”

BLANK CANVAS THEATRE

1305 W. 78th St., Suite 211 Cleveland : blankcanvastheatre.com

440-941-0458

BOP STOP

2920 Detroit Ave. Cleveland : themusicsettlement.org/bop-stop

216-771-6551

CESEAR’S FORUM

2796 Tinkers Lane, Twinsburg

Kennedy’s, Playhouse Square

1501 Euclid Ave., Cleveland : cesearsforum.com

330-425-2485

Cesear’s Forum will present “A FUGITIVE’S LESSON,” two comedic absurdist plays: Eugene Ionesco’s “The Lesson” and Ugo Betti’s “The Fugitive” (abridged) reflect societal ideology gone awry. Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Sept. 29 through Oct. 28, with two Sunday performances at Playhouse Square.

• Sept. 29 to Oct. 28: “A FUGITIVE’S LESSON”

CHAGRIN VALLEY LITTLE THEATRE

40 River St.

Chagrin Falls : cvlt.org

440-247-8955

CITYMUSIC CLEVELAND

12200 Fairhill Road Cleveland : citymusiccleveland.org

216-632-3572

Loganberry Books Annex Gallery 13015

Alice, manager

CLEVELAND BALLET

23020 Miles Road

Bedford Heights

: clevelandballet.org

216-320-9000

CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART PERFORMING ARTS PROGRAM

11150 East Blvd.

Cleveland

: clevelandart.org/categories/performing-arts

216-421-7350

CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE

1407 Euclid Ave.

Cleveland : clevelandplayhouse.com

216-400-7000

: @clevelandplayhouse : @cleveplayhouse : @ClevePlayHouse

Cleveland Play House’s 2023-2024 season lineup is here! CPH’s 108th season will take audiences on a voyage showcasing a range of both classic and new productions, including “THURGOOD,” “MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN,” Karamu’s “BLACK NATIVITY,” and “IN THE HEIGHTS!” Guarantee seats for all productions by becoming a season ticket holder.

Performances and Dates:

• Sept. 9 to Oct. 1, 2023: “Thurgood”

• Sept. 20 to 30, 2023: “The Tempest”

• Oct. 21 to Nov. 12, 2023: “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”

• Dec. 1 to 16, 2023: Karamu’s “Black Nativity”

• Feb. 10 to March 3, 2024: “The Play That Goes Wrong”

• Feb. 21 to March 2, 2024: “Middletown”

• April 6 to 28, 2024: “Amadeus”

• May 11 to June 9, 2024: “In the Heights”

CLEVELAND PUBLIC THEATRE

6415 Detroit Ave. Cleveland : cptonline.org

216-631-2727

CONVERGENCE-CONTINUUM

2438 Scranton Road

Cleveland : convergence-continuum.org

216-687-0074

DOBAMA THEATRE

2340 Lee Road Cleveland : dobama.org

216-932-3396

ENSEMBLE THEATRE AT NOTRE DAME COLLEGE

4545 College Road

South Euclid : ensembletheatrecle.org 216-321-2930

FAIRMOUNT CENTER FOR THE ARTS

8400 Fairmount Road

Novelty : fairmountcenter.org 440-338-3171

FINE ARTS ASSOCIATION

38660 Mentor Ave. Willoughby : fineartsassociation.org 440-951-7500

GREAT LAKES THEATER

1501 Euclid Ave., #300 Cleveland : greatlakestheater.org 216-241-5490

GROUNDWORKS DANCETHEATER

13125 Shaker Square Cleveland : groundworksdance.org 216-751-0088

Fall Performance Series 2023

• Oct. 13 to 14: 7:30 p.m. Playhouse Square’s Allen Theatre, 1407 Euclid Ave, Cleveland. Tickets: $25-$30

• Nov. 3 to 4: 7:30 p.m. The Knight Stage at Akron Civic Theatre, 182 S. Main St., Akron. Tickets: $25

HEIGHTS YOUTH THEATRE

2181 Miramar Blvd. University Heights : heightsyouththeatre.com 216-923-1583

INGENUITY CLEVELAND

5401 Hamilton Ave. Cleveland : ingenuitycleveland.org 216-589-9444

INTERPLAY JEWISH THEATRE

2430 Lee Road Cleveland Heights

: interplaycleveland.com

216-393-7529

STAGE LISTINGS

KARAMU HOUSE

2355 E. 89th St.

Cleveland

: karamuhouse.org

216-795-7070

LES DÉLICES

P.O. Box 602187

Cleveland : lesdelices.org

216-302-8404

MALTZ PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

1855 Ansel Road

Cleveland : case.edu/maltzcenter

216-368-6062

MAYNE ATTRACTION CENTER FOR THE ARTS

3685 Lee Road

Shaker Heights

: mayneattractiondance.com/nonprof

216-269-3829

NOVA’S PERFORMING ARTS

1846 Coventry Road

Cleveland Heights

: thenovapac.com

440-708-8368

PIANO CLEVELAND

20600 Chagrin Blvd.

Shaker Heights

: pianocleveland.org

216-707-5297

PLAYHOUSE SQUARE

1501 Euclid Ave.

Cleveland : playhousesquare.org

216-241-6000

PORTHOUSE THEATRE

3143 O’Neil Road

Cuyahoga Falls

: kent.edu/porthouse

330-672-3884

SEAT OF THE PANTS

1030 Euclid Ave., #203

Cleveland : seatofthepants.org

847-456-2030

SHAKER ARTS COUNCIL

16781 Chagrin Blvd.

Shaker Heights

: shakerartscouncil.org

216-916-9360

STAGECRAFTERS YOUTH THEATRE

32000 Chagrin Blvd.

Pepper Pike

: orangerec.com/stagecraftersyouththeatre.aspx

216-831-8601 ext. 5105

TUESDAY MUSICAL ASSOCIATION

1041 W. Market St., #200

Akron : tuesdaymusical.org

330-761-3460

UPSTAGE PLAYERS

17109 Lakeshore Blvd.

Cleveland : upstageplayers.com

216-862-8892

VERB, “OHIO CONTEMPORARY BALLET”

3558 Lee Road

Shaker Heights : verbballets.org

216-397-3757

Verb, “Ohio Contemporary Ballet” engages people through bold performances and strives to be a vital community asset by providing access to dance opportunities and education. The professional dance company aims to commission choreographers that are reflective of our times, while upholding the deep roots of the ballet-based companies that preceded it in the Great Lakes region.

2023-2024 Season

• Aug. 4: Ballet Under the Stars

Verb, 3558 Lee Road, Shaker Heights

• Aug. 11: Lakeside Chautauqua

119 W. 3rd St, Lakeside Marblehead

• Aug. 12: Tremont Arts in August

Lincoln Park, W. 14th and Starkweather, Cleveland (Raindate Aug. 13)

• Sept. 9: Pandemonium

Cleveland Public Theatre, 6415 Detroit Ave., Cleveland

• Sept. 23: Arpino Celebration

Chicago

• Sept. 29: Dance Showcase, Playhouse Square

• Oct. 20 to 22: Neil Zaza’s One Dark Night

Tour throughout Northeast Ohio

• Oct. 28: Neil Zaza’s One Dark Night

MGM Racino, 10777 Northfield Road, Northfield

WEATHERVANE PLAYHOUSE

1301 Weathervane Lane

Akron : weathervaneplayhouse.com

330-836-2626

- Compiled by Zoe Krantz

GALLERIES

ARTICLE/ART IN CLEVELAND

15316 Waterloo Road, Cleveland

P: 440-655-6954

: facebook.com/artincle

Article/Art In Cleveland Gallery and Studios located in the flourishing Waterloo Arts District presents many of Cleveland’s exciting visual artists and craftspersons each month during First Friday’s Walk All Over Waterloo evenings. Check our Facebook page for shows and open studio events.

CLEVELAND PRINT ROOM

1438 W. 28th St. #2, Cleveland

P: 216-401-5981

:: clevelandprintroom.com

: facebook.com/ClevelandPrintRoom

The Cleveland Print Room advances the art and appreciation of the photographic image in all its forms. Visit f/2, a new community-based pop-up project focused on deepening relationships with the larger community through public exhibitions, educational workshops, thoughtful partnerships and experimental programs.

DISTRICT GALLERY

The Van Aken District

3393 Tuttle Road, Shaker Heights

P: 216-218-9307

E: info@district-gallery.com

: district-gallery.com

District Gallery is an important source for contemporary art in the 21st century. Featuring local and international artists, the collection of artworks is diverse and ranges from a variety of mediums including painting, photography, drawing, print editions, fiber art, ceramics, sculpture and other mixed media.

LEE HEINEN STUDIO

12402 Mayfield Road, Cleveland

P: 216-921-4088, 216-469-3288

: leeheinen.com

: facebook.com/leeheinen

M. GENTILE STUDIOS

1588 E. 40th St., 1A, Cleveland P: 216-881-2818

: mgentilestudios.com

A personalized art resource for individuals, collectors and businesses. We offer assistance in the selection and preservation of artwork in many media. Our archival custom framing services are complemented by our skill in the installation of two- and three-dimensional artwork in a variety of residential and corporate settings.

This is an intuitive piece. It is composed of a mixture of materials (oil and collage). Mine is a working studio. To visit, you may call ahead for an appointment or take your chances and “Searching for a Muse,” 36 x 36 inches, oil on canvas by artist Lee Heinen.

LOGANBERRY

drop by.

13015 Larchmere Blvd., Shaker Heights P: 216-795-9800

: loganberrybooks.com

Loganberry Books Annex Gallery features a monthly rotation of local artist exhibitions, with an opening reception on the first Wednesday evening of the month.

Listings are provided by Canvas advertisers and as a courtesy to readers.

SUMMIT ARTSPACE

MUSEUMS

140 E. Market St., Akron P: 330-376-8480

: summitartspace.org

SM: @summitartspace

Summit Artspace is a non-profit home to artist studios, arts organizations and five galleries with new exhibitions four times each year. We provide free public events to engage the community, as well as professional development programming for local artists. Public hours: Fridays 12-7 p.m. and Saturdays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

THE GALLERY AT LAKELAND

7700 Clocktower Drive

Kirtland, OH 44094

P: 440-525-7029

: lakelandcc.edu/gallery

: The Gallery at Lakeland

: The Gallery at Lakeland

The “center” for the Arts in Lake County, The Gallery at Lakeland presents:

“The Skull and Skeleton in Art VIII... Folk Art to Pop Culture,” curated by Mary Urbas: Sept. 21 to Nov. 6, 2023.

Costume Party Reception: Oct. 26, 2023.

The LCC Visual Arts Faculty Exhibition: Nov. 16, 2023 to Jan. 24, 2024. Open Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday, closed; D building, first floor.

VALLEY ART CENTER

155 Bell St., Chagrin Falls P: 440-247-7507

: valleyartcenter.org

Valley Art Center is the hub of the visual arts in Chagrin Falls! VAC offers classes for all ages and in every medium including painting, jewelry design, drawing, clay and more. VAC also presents five gallery exhibitions annually and the iconic Art by the Falls outdoor art festival in June each year.

WOLFS GALLERY

: Wolfsgallery.com

: @wolfsgallery

: @wolfsgallery

23645 Mercantile Road, Beachwood

P: 216-721-6945

Visit WOLFS’ 15 galleries exhibiting many hundreds of artworks representing myriad styles and periods. Tour our generous space Tuesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. or by appointment. Buying and selling fine art in Cleveland since 1975.

Fifteen galleries exhibiting many hundreds of artworks representing myriad styles and periods.

THE ARTISTS ARCHIVES OF THE WESTERN RESERVE

1834 E. 123rd St., Cleveland

P: 216-721-9020

: ArtistsArchives.org

: Facebook.com/

ArtistsArchivesoftheWesternReserve

Through Aug. 26, 2023

Summer is the time to celebrate LARGE art at Rwanda Revisited I, detail, painting by David Haberman AAWR! AAWR and three community partners present, “The BIG @SS @RT SHOW.” Big art, even bigger talent. Admission is always free and gallery open hours are Wednesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday noon to 4 p.m. Visit all four venues and your name will be included in a raffle of original art.

MALTZ MUSEUM

2929 Richmond Road, Beachwood

P: 216-593-0575 : maltzmuseum.org

The Maltz Museum introduces visitors to the beauty and diversity of heritage in the context of the American experience. It promotes an understanding of Jewish history, religion and culture, and builds bridges of appreciation and understanding with those of other religions, races, cultures and ethnicities. It’s an educational resource for Northeast Ohio’s Jewish and general communities.

MASSILLON MUSEUM

121 Lincoln Way East, Massillon P: 330-833-4061

: MassillonMuseum.org

: facebook.com/massillonmuseum

“John W. Carlson: Set the Twilight Reeling” (Sept. 16 to Nov. 12); “A Way to Win: Paul Brown’s Innovations”; “Hilary Gent: Waters of Motherhood” (Aug. 5 to Sept. 17); “Group Ten: Ten Point Perspective” (Aug. 12 – Oct. 15); Eight additional galleries. Greatness Cafe, unique shop, John W. Carlson, #14, charcoal and paint on paper. Sensory Room. Free admission.

MUSIC & PERFORMING ARTS

CLEVELAND ISRAEL ARTS CONNECTION

Jewish Federation of Cleveland E: israelarts@jewishcleveland.org

: jewishcleveland.org/israelarts

The Cleveland Israel Arts Connection features the finest in Israeli film, documentary, theater, dance, music, visual art and literature. For updates, visit jewishcleveland.org/israelarts. Please join the Cleveland Israel Arts Connection Facebook page for additional opportunities to experience Israeli arts.

23645 Mercantile Road, Beachwood, Ohio | 216-721-6945

CURATOR CORNER

“Anatomy Collected” by Betsy Stirratt

By Meghan Walsh

The McDonough Museum of Art at Youngstown State University will showcase Betsy Stirratt’s multimedia artwork video, “Anatomy Collected” in her upcoming “Embedded Histories” exhibition. “Anatomy Collected” is one of three works that will make up the exhibition, along with Stirratt’s “Natural History” and “Zoology Collected.”

The film combines visual and audio clips captured by Stirratt with photos from the 2016 book “Anatomy Collected,” bound by Mary Uthuppuru. It incorporates scientific educational film, media gathered from museum visits and clips from Stirratt’s life.

Museum director Claudia Berlinski gives Canvas some insight into Stirratt’s work and what makes the piece unique and relevant.

Canvas: What makes “Anatomy Collected” noteworthy?

Berlinski: It is an interesting juxtaposition of media and photographic imagery in di erent states of clarity.

Appropriated film from scientific educational movies is, of course, grainy and has an aged color while the pages of her artist book are extremely clear. The music and movie narration fades in and out, adding to the overall sense of the passage of time and history.

The videos in the exhibit were made depicting three books that contain words and pictures about collections Stirratt has visited: specifically botany, anatomy and zoological collections. Each of the videos features turning pages of the books in Stirratt’s “Collected Series,” interspersed with video and audio clips that she gathered from museum visits, educational films and from life.

What response does the piece evoke?

Berlinski: It might evoke an understanding of how objects in museums and collections relate to real life.

What kind of current events may have influenced the work?

Berlinski: I think that what is happening in the world has probably driven Stirratt’s body of work quite a bit – things like climate change and concerns for the environment. Other well-known contemporary artists who have been addressing these issues are Mark Dion, Olafur Eliasson and Maya Lin, but there are hundreds of others who address the climate crisis in a vast array of media and approaches.

The climate crisis and environmental issues are one of the most important topics of our lifetime. They will continue to a ect mankind for decades, perhaps centuries. Artists often reflect on what is happening in the world or wish to utilize their practice to sound the alarm for such dominant and critical concerns or events.

What can you tell us about the artist?

Berlinski: Betsy Stirratt is a native of New Orleans and is the founding director of Grunwald Gallery of Art at Indiana University Bloomington, where she has curated

many, many exhibits. She has shown her work in group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Stirratt is the recipient of a visual arts fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and awards from the Indiana Arts Commission and the American Craft Council. From Stirratt’s artist statement: “She explores natural and social histories through photographs, books, paintings, objects and video to create multi-layered narratives about the human interaction of humans and nature. Her interests have driven her to try to better understand the nature of scientific discovery in the time of climate change. She is interested in the power of natural collections as they contain the keys to understanding the history of the earth and how we might create resilience in the face of disastrous climate change.”

ON VIEW

“Anatomy Collected”

Artist: Betsy Stirratt

Find it: On display for Stirrattʼs “Embedded Histories” exhibition, which runs Sept. 5 through Oct. 20 at the McDonough Museum of Art, 525 Wick Ave., Youngstown.

Events: Public reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Sept. 8; public lecture by Stirratt at 5:10 p.m. Oct. 4.

Stills of “Anatomy Collected,” a 4 minute and 21 second collection of visual and audio clips captured and compiled by Betsy Stirratt. Photos courtesy of McDonough Museum of Art

SURFACE IDENTITIES

STUDIO WORKS BY ISRAELI STREET ARTISTS

Sara Hurand, AIA, Curator

Street art is part of the experience of Israel, especially in densely populated urban contexts like Tel Aviv, Haifa, and the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem. Painting in public places empowers artists to claim space, make it their own, and communicate to you, or anyone who happens by it. is exhibition gathers studio works by sixteen Israeli street artists to give us a sense of Israel, the place, through their eyes and hands. A cacophony of styles and colors brings you the visual noise you would encounter on the streets of Israel.

~ Sara Hurand, AIA, Curator

Gallery Open Houses

Sunday, August 20 @ 1-3 pm

Tuesday, August 22 @ 6-8 pm

Sunday, October 15 @ 1-3 pm

Tuesday, October 17 @ 6-8 pm

Sunday, November 19 @ 1-3 pm

Tuesday, November 21 @ 6-8 pm

Sunday, December 17 @ 1-3 pm

Tuesday, December 19 @ 6-8 pm

ROE GREEN FOUNDATION

GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY:

The Leonard Krieger Fund of the

Roe Green Gallery, Jewish Federation of Cleveland Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Building, 25701 Science Park Drive